Style combination · Pairs well
Fluxus Graphics × Victorian Letterpress
Maciunas took many of his pictures from old engravings in the New York Public Library's Picture Collection; pair a Victorian cut with a plain typewritten label in one sans for the same deadpan collision of old picture and flat text.
Mix them and make something Fluxus Graphics Victorian Letterpress
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Fluxus Graphics
- Colour from Fluxus Graphics
- Form from Fluxus Graphics
- Composition from Victorian Letterpress
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Fluxus Graphics
Square
Anton, standing in for IBM Executive condensed sans typewriter (nearly all running text for about eight years, published straight from the machine and enlarged by photostat; the machine's owners, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, say Maciunas had some letters custom-replaced with broader ones; after 1968 a newer IBM with changeable faces added bold and italic, still sans serif)
Text · Victorian Letterpress
The commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type). Lines are centred and each is set in a different face and size to fill the measure, framed in rules and stock borders and printed in black with one or two flat colours.
Zilla Slab; Victorian Letterpress used Fat face romans and Egyptian / Antique slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Fluxus Graphics, with a counter-accent from Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#f2efe7ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#cbd04faccent · 18% -
#b3322baccent · 14% -
#b3905faccent · 10% -
#9a978daccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2efe7;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #cbd04f;
--accent-2: #b3322b;
--accent-3: #b3905f;
--accent-4: #9a978d;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Fluxus Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Both mix found type with appropriated pictures, but punk tears and photocopies while Fluxus keeps a clean offset black, justified blocks and a tight edge-to-edge grid; use the Fluxus version when cheap materials should still look ordered.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Both rely on a sans and a rectilinear grid, but Swiss design spends white space where Maciunas abolished margins and mixed many faces within one name; set the two side by side to decide whether order should breathe or fill.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · One ink on coloured stock, small runs and editions sent by post: print Fluxus-style cards and box labels on a riso in black on kraft or coloured paper, and let the stock colour change from copy to copy.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Contrasts · Same New York years and the same habit of locking letters together until they touch, but Lubalin kerned polished phototype for advertising while Maciunas pressed leftover dry-transfer letters into puzzle monograms on kraft; choose between the commercial ligature and the scavenged one.
- Situationist Détournement Graphics Contrasts · Contemporaries who both took found pictures, but Maciunas packed them into a tight, deadpan black grid of mixed dry-transfer type, while Debord and Jorn scattered fragments under painted ink and aimed the joke at revolution; choose order or drift.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.